It’s the so-called healthy who have brought the world to the verge of ruin.
. . . . The rantings of the madman, Domenico, from Nostalghia

Sometimes the most profound truths emanate from the mouths of children and madmen. For the rest of us, “sanity” sometimes requires that we deny basic truths. We supposedly sane people listen, for example, when a national leader states that “the best way to promote our security is to remain on the offensive.” We collectively nod our heads as if that made sense, as if it did not conflict with all that we have learned about how cycles of violence are fueled and inflamed. “Offensive” actions are inherently fragmenting, driving the wedges that splinter humanity, thereby promoting endless rounds of hostility and violence. Nostalghia (1983) concerns itself with that kind of fragmentation – blind aggressive nationalism – and several other kinds as well. The film’s core topic is the psychological fragmentation that erupts when one’s longing for another time and place in one’s life (nostalgia) blocks the appreciation of the here and now.

Historical Background: Andrei Tarkovsky was the son of Russian poet Arseni Tarkovsky, so it’s perhaps not surprising that he would become known for highly poetic films. Tarkovsky worked as a geologist for a while before entering film school in Moscow. Tarkovsky began making films in 1962, with My Name is Ivan and hit full stride with his second film, arguably his most acclaimed, Andrei Rublev (1966). The film was not released by Soviet censors until 1971, at which time it won a FIPRESCI Award at Cannes. He followed with Solaris (1972), The Mirror (1975), and Stalker (1979), all made in the U.S.S.R. During the 1980’s, Tarkovsky began making films outside of the Soviet Union in order to gain more artistic freedom. He made Nostalgia in Italy in 1983 and, ironically, learned soon thereafter, in 1984, that he would not be granted permission to remain abroad longer and that if he were to return to Moscow, he would no longer be allowed to make films. Tarkovsky therefore made the cataclysmic decision to defect to the West, with his wife Larissa, but having to leave behind his son, Andriuschka. He made his last film, The Sacrifice in Sweden, in 1986, as he was dying of lung cancer. Tarkovsky stated, “How could I have imagined as I was making Nostalghia that the stifling sense of longing that fills the screen space of that film was to become my lot for the rest of my life; that from now until the end of my days I would bear the painful malady within myself?” Even before his traumatic isolation from his homeland, Tarkovsky was a man who carried a lot of pain with him through life, pain that manifested as existential angst, a crisis of faith, and, ultimately, severe depression. The protagonist of Nostalghia, Andrei Gorchakov, bears the same given name as the director and is readily understood as his surrogate. Gorchakov’s trip across the pool outside of St. Catherine’s Cathedral carrying a burning candle can be readily understood as Tarkovsky’s journey through life bearing his personal anguish. Like Gorchakov, Tarkovsky needed desperately to reconcile his personal fragmentation – a splintering that resulted from his alienation from his homeland necessitated by his need for artistic freedom.

The Story: As the opening credits run, we see a pastoral scene from the Russian countryside in black-and-white with a thick fog rolling across the panorama from left to right. Three women stand silently and nearly motionless in this hazy vista. We soon discover that this is a nostalgic memory of the protagonist, a Russian poet, Andrei Gorchakov (Oleg Yankovsky), who is on assignment in the Tuscany region of Italy. He is there to research a 17th century Russian composer, Pavel Sosnovsky, who had gone to Italy to study music at Bologna, but the composer's great longing for his homeland had taken him back to Russia, despite knowing that he would have to resume the life of a serf, which was essentially a life of slavery. Shortly after returning to Russia, the composer killed himself by hanging. Gorchakov is traveling by car with his translator, Eugenia (Domiziana Giordano). They arrive at a scenic shrine of the Virgin Mary where women come to pray for children. Eugenia is excited about seeing the shrine but Gorchakov is despondent and has lost all interest in sightseeing. Gorchakov chooses to wait in the car. Inside the shrine, Eugenia observes the devout Catholic women praying to the statue of the Madonna of Childbirth and a dramatic release of a flock of starlings from the Virgin’s body. Eugenia has a brief conversation with a priest at the shrine when he expresses surprise that she “is just looking” and hasn’t come to plead for a child. The priest’s view is that having children is a woman’s sole duty.

Gorchakov and Eugenia continue on to the hotel where they will be staying, which is situated close to St. Catherine’s Cathedral and hot springs at Bagno Vignoni. The hot springs serve as a kind of spa where tourists bathe in order to relieve various aches and pains. Gorchakov and Eugenia are at cross purposes, which becomes apparent by their interactions as they travel, as they settle into the hotel, and as they walk about the vicinity of the Cathedral and pool. Eugenia is interested in romance with Gorchakov but he is in such low spirits and so preoccupied with his nostalgia that he can’t muster any interest in his travel companion, despite her Rubenesque Italian physique and sociability. The gloomy Gorchakov says almost nothing to her while she becomes increasing distraught and outspoken about her disappointment with him. Their friction culminates in an angry and irrational verbal attack by Eugenia on Gorchakov in which she complains about never picking the right kind of man, his melancholy, and his disinterest in her sexually. She bares one breast to emphasize the lethargic state of Gorchakov’s libido. Eugenia decides to leave and return to Rome. Their argument concludes to the strains of Chinese music emanating from one of the hotel rooms, emphasizing the conflicts inherent in trying to reconcile disparate traditions and manners of behavior across cultures.

While walking the grounds around the hot springs, Gorchakov encounters a man who is a subject of derision for the various hotel guests in the pool. He is Domenico (Erland Josephson), who is infamous in the town because he once locked his entire family in their house for seven solid years because he was anticipating that the apocalypse was imminent. The debate among the locals is whether Domenico is insane or a man of exceptional faith. Gorchakov feels an immediate commonality with Domenico and seeks his acquaintance. Domenico is detached from his family and the society around him, rejecting the material world with its consumerism, technology, and pollution. Although Gorchakov’s own sense of detachment seems more specific to his homeland, he also senses that the magnitude of his homesickness reveals some greater inner turmoil. Both men are in the wrong place at the wrong time. While visiting the madman’s dwelling, which is half inundated with water, Gorchakov opens a door onto a landscape that looks distinctly like Russian terrain. Viewers are left to wonder how much of this vision is in Gorchakov’s imagination and how much it exists in the physical world.

In a later scene, after having too much to drink, Gorchakov wanders into a watery ruin near the Cathedral. This stark and eerie setting reminds Gorchakov of the barren landscape of Russia that is in such great contrast to the lushness of the Italian scenery. A young child appears and sits on a stone wall nearby. Gorchakov opens up a bit (more than at any other time in the film), ostensibly speaking to the child, but really simply expressing his inner feelings for his own sake and for ours.

Meanwhile, Domenico has plans to “save” the world. Gorchakov becomes privy to one element of that plan because Domenico earnestly seeks to enlist Gorchakov’s help. For some unspecified reason, Domenico believes that it is crucial that he carry a lighted candle across the length of the pool at St. Catherine’s, from one end to the other. The task is more difficult than it might seem because the hot springs create swirling currents of wind that invariably blow the candle out. Adding to his problem, the guests at the hotel believe that whenever Domenico enters the pool, he is trying to drown himself and they always take hold of him and carry him out. Domenico asks Gorchakov to complete this “crucial” task for him, since he has other activities to undertake in Rome. Gorchakov agrees, though initially without much real sincerity.

The fates of these two lost souls are now intertwined, bringing them to concurrent epiphanies, though many miles apart. Domenico leaves for Rome where he will be participating in a religious demonstration. Domenico mounts a famous statue and recites a string of quasi-religious pronouncements and prophecies. “It’s the so-called healthy who have brought the world to the verge of ruin.” He wraps up his diatribe by adding, “What kind of world is this if a madman tells you that you must be ashamed of yourselves?” Domenico then undertakes one last incomprehensible act of self-immolation.

Meanwhile, Gorchakov has come to believe that he must complete his friend’s request – not because he believes it will save the world but because it may save himself. Fortunately for him, the pool has been drained on this particular day to clean out the debris that had been tossed into it by uncaring people. Crossing the pool from one edge to the other, keeping the flame of the candle burning, has come to represent for Gorchakov his need to connect the fractured segments of his psyche, his nostalgia for his youthful memories with his present, his love for his homeland with his present physical location in Italy, and his corporeal self with the cosmos. Gorchakov tries several times to cross the pool and fails, the candle blowing out each time. He learns to open his jacket to create a shield, symbolically opening the core of his being to the external world. He finally achieves his purpose and reaches the wall at the far end of the pool, collapsing against a ladder, which could be seen as the symbolic stairway to the heavens. A beautiful vision washes across his consciousness. He sees his beloved pastorale Russian scene from his childhood, with his mother and sisters, nestled inside the pillars of St. Catherine’s Cathedral, reconciling his past and his present.

Themes: Tarkovsky films, for better or for worse, are all about ideas. Tarkovsky is essentially a poet working in a visual medium. The most evident theme of Nostalghia is the titular theme – the exploration of the nature of nostalgia and, in its most extreme form, its potentially devastating effect of mental health. Whether Russians have stronger nostalgia for their homeland that do other nationalities is debatable, but Tarkovsky clearly believes that Russians carry with them throughout their lives an intense longing for their mother country regardless of where circumstances may take them. Nostalghia is built out of what is essentially a triple dose of nostalgia. The protagonist, Russian poet Andrei Gorchakov, has traveled to Italy to conduct research and becomes psychologically disorientated by his absence from his homeland. The object of his research is to study the life of a 17th century Russian composer, Pavel Sosnovsky, who left Russia and went to Italy to study music, but who had felt such an immense longing for his homeland that he had returned even though he would be condemned to a life of slavery as a serf in Russia. Gorchakov is quite obviously a stand-in for Tarkovsky, who was soon to begin his own life of exile from Russia, even as he was filming Nostalghia in Italy. Gorchakov suffers a depression of spirit and sinks into his interior world, preferring to be awash in fragmentary memories than to deal with the physical reality that he finds surrounding him. He’s homesick and disengaged. In his melancholy, Gorchakov refuses to engage with his lovely traveling companion or the scenic opportunities at hand in Italy. “I’m tired of these sickeningly beautiful sights,” he complains and refuses to accompany his interpreter as she visits the famous shrine of the Virgin Mary. He realizes that his journey lies within himself – that he needs to find the answer to his pain within himself and not in the physical world. Later, at the pool of St. Catherine, famous for its healing powers, Gorchakov effectively seeks cure for his sense of psychological fragmentation.

Tarkovsky then relates the concept of nostalgia to three other kinds of psychological fragmentation. One of these forms of psychological disintegration is existential isolation, represented by Domenico. Gorchakov realizes the commonality between Domenico’s troubled mind and his own. He recognizes that if he is able to understand the source of Domenico’s distress, he’ll be closer to understanding his own. Domenico’s distress stems from his belief that the world is falling apart. Though he recognizes that he is considered mentally ill by those around him, he quite reasonably points out that “It’s the so-called healthy who have brought the world to the verge of ruin.” Domenico is disgusted by the materialism and environmental destruction that he sees in modern society. “Just look at nature and you’ll see that life is simple. We must go back to where we were, to the point where you took the wrong turn. We must go back to the main foundations of life without dirtying the water.” Domenico is a man of faith and believes that the world of human society has abandoned its spiritual foundations. Domenico wants relief from the banality of the mundane materialism that he sees all around him. Gorchakov’s quest is similar to the extent that he too wants relief from the external world so that he can find respite within his nostalgic memories. Domenico believes that the world can be saved if a lighted candle can be carried across the length of the pool at St. Catherine’s, symbolically linking one end of the pool with the other: the material world with the cosmos. For Gorchakov, it becomes the symbolic representation of the journey of life from birth to death. Keeping the flame alive as he crosses will be tantamount to living his life from birth to death without sinking irreconcilably into chronic despair. Nostalgia relates to memories of childhood or an early stage of adulthood, so carrying the candle from one end of the pool to the other is equivalent to successfully carrying one’s precious memories while also moving forward. What Gorchakov and Tarkovsky both needed to understand is that brooding preoccupation with reuniting one’s corporeal being with the spiritual world can become a death wish and engender suicidal ideation. It Domenico’s case, it culminated in his self-immolation. Tarkovsky was suicidal at times in his life and came to realize finally that his deep melancholy was really a longing for death.

Tarkovsky also relates nostalgia to problems of interpersonal communication. Gorchakov has cut himself off from relationship with others – Eugenia, the priests at the shrine, the other guests of the hotel, and the Italians in general. Eugenia is clearly attracted to him and, at one level, he feels some sexual interest in her as well. She appears, for example, in one of his dreams, provocatively caressing his wife, as men are wont to fantasize. Nevertheless, in his waking state, he chooses to spurn Eugenia, despite her sensuousness, preferring to wallow in his interior grief. He perceives her as just another element of the material world that may potentially distract him from the inner psychological work that he needs desperately to advance. Yet, this choice to tune out other people also deepens his self loathing: “I never go anywhere, I never see anyone.” Eugenia, in this film, represents shallow self-centeredness and preoccupation with the practicalities of everyday life. Early on, she is contrasted with the devout women supplicants at the shrine of the Virgin and their exclusive concern with bearing and raising children, which, Tarkovsky implies, is a more fundamental and spiritually attuned preoccupation for women. Her crassness is illustrated as well when she exposes a breast to Gorchakov to illustrate his disinterest in her sexually. Later, her shallowness is illustrated by her choice of Vittorio as “her man,” since he is from a distinguished family but is preoccupied with his work and takes little genuine notice of her.

Finally, Tarkovsky relates Gorchakov’s nostalgia to the fragmentation of humankind caused by national borders and cultural differences. It is Gorchakov’s contact with the foreign Italian culture and terrain that triggers his deep psychic pain. Tarkovsky underscores the foreignness of the terrain of Italy by emphasizing how its lushness contrasts with the more stark and monochromatic landscape of Russia. Gorchakov insists that translating poetry is impossible – which may be true to an extent – but then extends that idea to the arts in general, where it is a less valid statement. Music, for example, is much closer to a universal language than poetry or literature, even if a Westerner might have to develop an ear for, say, Chinese opera. When Eugenia asks, “How can we get to know each other?”, Gorchakov replies, “By abolishing frontiers between states.” Yet, Gorchakov’s words are hypocritical, since it is really his own psychological frontiers that cause him to refuse to make any effort to get to know, understand, or fit in with the Italians. It is no accident that much of the film transpires in the vicinity of St. Catherine’s hot spring at Bagno Vignoni. St. Catherine of Siena was a strong advocate of reunification of the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches after the Great Schism in the Ecumenical Church.

What this film is about, therefore, is overcoming psychological fragmentation in multiple respects: (1) reconciling our longing for times and places of our childhood with our present life, (2) understanding our transient biological lives in a larger cosmic framework, (3) communicating openly and meaningfully with the people in our lives, and (4) expanding our identification with all of humanity through cultural understanding and tolerance. Although each of these issues could be viewed in religious terms, they can just as readily be dealt with instead as psychological and philosophical issues.

Production Values: Tarkovsky produced relatively few films in his lifetime partly because each one that he did produce was a piece of delicate craftsmanship. He fretted over every detail until he had achieved precisely what he intended. Nostalghia is very much reminiscent of a painting in its visual presentation and a poem in its thematic substance. Tarkovsky handles the many transitions between present reality and dreams or imagination by remarkable use of color and black-and-white. Dreams and nostalgic daydreams are shot in black-and-white so that the nature of these scenes will be readily evident to viewers. For example, the entire opening of the film transpires in black-and-white until Eugenia enters the shrine. The scene within the shrine is shot in pastels with a sepia tint. In another example, Gorchakov stares at the back of Eugenia’s head and it briefly turns to black and white as he imagines, for a moment, that it is his mother’s head instead. Tarkovsky also uses the soundtrack to demonstrate the clash of cultures. The opening pastorale scene is accompanied by Russian songs but these are drowned out by the strains of Verdi as the travelers approach the shrine of the Virgin Mary. Tarkovsky also introduces incongruous images such as when Gorchakov’s dog from his boyhood home in Russia trots into his hotel room while he is asleep and dreaming. There’s a scene in which Gorchakov dreams that his wife is napping in his hotel room, but the direction of the bed is shown perpendicular to its actual position in the room. Tarkovsky thus creatively illustrates how dreams are composed of fragments from both the past and the present in strangely incongruous rearrangements.

The weight of the messages of this film is carried by the images more than by the performances. The performances were very good within the limitations of the roles. Oleg Yankovsky (sometimes spelled Jankovsky) appeared later in My 20th Century (1989) and Mute Witness (1995). Erland Josephson has a long resume that includes The Magician (1958), The Hour of the Wolf (1968), The Passion of Anna (1969), Cries and Whispers (1972), Scenes from a Marriage (1973), Autumn Sonata (1978), The Sacrifice (1986), and The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988). Domiziana Giordana later appeared in Interview with the Vampire (1994).

Bottom-Line: This is the third Tarkovsky film that I’ve seen and the first that has thoroughly won me over. I don’t share a lot of Tarkovsky’s views of life or psychological disposition. Both Solaris and The Sacrifice seemed off-target to me, promoting viewpoints that I believe to be misguided. Not so with this film. This film is a poetic and visual masterpiece. Keep in mind, however, that all Tarkovsky films place demands on your patience and concentration, offering little plot or action. You need to ask yourself if you are up to that kind of viewing experience before trying to get to know this particular director. Tarkovsky takes a basic idea – “nostalgia” in this case – and then looks at it in a leisurely manner from every conceivable vantage point. If the concept of “nostalgia” doesn’t have much personal meaning for you, you’re likely to experience this film as boring. Nostalghia is in Italian with English subtitles and has a running time of 120 minutes. I highly recommend it, but only for viewers with the requisite viewing habits.


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from Russia and the U.S.S.R.:

Alexander Nevsky
Andrei Rublev
Anna Karenina
Ballad of a Soldier
Burnt By the Sun
Come and See
The Cranes Are Flying
Dersu Uzala
Don Quixote
Freeze Die
Ivan the Terrible
Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
Solaris
Strike
War and Peace

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age